Overcooking can lead to health problems

Here’s a cautionary tale about the importance of not overcooking your food.

The BBC reports that overcooking foods can cause ovarian or womb cancer in woman. “The fears surround acrylamides, chemicals produced when you fry, grill or roast a wide range of foods,” a BBC article reports. According to the BBC, Dutch researchers quizzed 120,000 people about their eating habits and found that women who eat more acrylamides seem to be at higher risk.

European Union authorities are advising folks not to overcook their foods.

“General advice, resulting from this project, is to avoid overcooking when baking, frying or toasting carbohydrate-rich foods,” a European Union spokesman said. “French fries and roast potatoes should be cooked to a golden yellow rather than golden brown color.”

But Dr Lesley Walker of Cancer Research UK says it is hard to tell if the extra cancers are due to acrylamides or another unhealthy aspect of the women’s diets. “Women shouldn’t be unduly worried by this news. It’s not easy to separate out one component of the diet from all the others when studying the complex diets of ordinary people.”